Wait, now it makes sense since you point out he wants regulation. He's the entrenched player. Regulations put up new barriers that will stymie competition.

Except he's saying that people should be worried about what his company, and others like it, are doing. Not that it's good, but that it's a force for evil.

Weird stance.

Thanks, this is partly why I posted. I've heard this version quite a few times as to why to avoid US Dollars. It seemed inconsistent with how other things worked, but crypto is pretty weird.

Tax shenanigans are a hassle I don't need, but that's certainly the line I've been fed on why you'd use a stablecoin.

The point of USDC? As far as I can tell it's just a way to defer taxes on crypto. IMHO the exchanges support them because it helps to encourage active trading.

***Not tax or legal advice, just my take on what they're doing***

You only pay taxes on profits when you convert your crypto to cash. So, if you're holding BTC and you think it's about to take a dump, you can trade into USDC instead of going to dollars. Because USDC is pegged to the dollar, you're just as safe as holding cash (if the coin is properly backed). Now you have the option of trading into other crypto or converting to dollars.

If you trade back into crypto, you've avoided paying a tax penalty for putting that money on the sidelines. You still pay taxes when you finally convert to dollars, but if you're actively trading delaying those taxes can make a big difference. That's why I think the exchanges support them.

If it seems weird, let's use a casino analog (good for crypto, right?). In this imaginary casino each table game uses different chips. You've turned your dollars into chips for blackjack. You've done very well. You'll know you'll get reported to the IRS if you have a big enough payout. You want to head to another game, but they take different chips. Instead of going to cash and buying chips, the casino lets you convert them to another chip. This is a normal exchange so far, you can trade BTC for ETH or whatever you're into. However this is a pain because you don't know what you want to play next. Now USDC comes in, it's a universal chip that you can get from the casino and then turn it into other chips you want later. Our imaginary gambler turns his chips into universal chips and then decides to what game to play later. They didn't do as well and ended up losing money on the trip. Because they didn't have to convert to cash in the middle, they don't also owe taxes on that money they won in the first game. In a better version they ended up winning overall, and winning bigger because they didn't lose part of their stake to taxes in the middle, and they still owe taxes on what they gained.

**If you're now asking how a stablecoin can make money if they're supposed match, then you've gotten to why people got mad. They tried to use the holdings they were watching over to make money on risker investments. Now it's back in cash and treasuries.

For all we know they actual did do that analysis and found that people working low hours and inconsistent times were the low performers.

Thanks for the link. The 69 BTC they recovered was transferred out of the hackers wallet on 5/27. They went after the target wallet.

I don't think so. The distributed shared ledger requires participants to validate the transactions.

There are mixers/tumblers that take in crypto and then send it out to new wallet IDs. So no 'direct' link, but the mixer needs to know (at least for a little while) what wallets are connected. Plus you can still track the mixer, so you may not know who it is anymore, but they know you're using a service that has few, if any, legitimate purposes.

As always, who are you hiding from? A mixer is probably effective if you're hiding money from a spouse, but not sure it works against nation state resources. I wouldn't be shocked if they're running (or have compromised) some of the mixers.

Tracing BTC transaction is trivial. It's in the ledger, it's how it works. What I want to know is where did they get the money back? Did the hackers foolishly move it to an exchange the US can pressure, did they hack the hackers and get access to the wallet? There's almost no detail.

I'm glad customers were posting about it. Because of that I was aware of the issue for almost a day before I was contacted by the company.

Right, sounds like she was a moderately successful scientist

Good luck with that! Most of them doubled down for another 4 and just barely missed getting it.

Don't most Nerds like Trivia games?

We're in different parallel universes!

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/skype-for-business-online-to-be-retired-in-2021/ba-p/777833

Skype for Business Online to Be Retired in 2021
Today we’re announcing that Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021.

No it isn't. My company is still on Skype. They're not selling it to new customers, but no one made your company switch early.